. >>> we now turn to a significant loss for the regime of syrian president assad, his country's military police chief just switched sides and joined the rebels. mohammed is monitoring the situation from lebanon and joins us live. >> reporter: joe, the day began with news that major general, chief of military place in syria, had defected, had decided to join as he called it the people's uprising. he posted a video in which he stated his reasons for why he was defectsing, one of which was that the syrian military had betrayed the ideal as of syria and gone after the syrian people. now, we heard from rebel-free syrian army members throughout the day that in fact the fsa had helped transport the major general across country lines from syria into turkey. they say is he safe, that is he in turkey. they've also said they're willing to help other military officials in syria defect, but that they wouldn't be willing to help for much longer. the rebels feel they are the upper hand. they're saying that it's only a small window of time, they're giving other military officials in syria to defect, oth